In an effort to distribute road costs—including, for example, costs for the maintenance and expansion of highway systems—more equitably among the road users, systems for collecting road use fees, also called tolls, are employed. Here, a distinction is made between two modalities, namely, systems for charging a flat fee and systems for charging toll based on the route traveled.
One toll collecting system is based on short-range communication using so-called beacon systems. Such beacon systems are characterized in that a microwave transmitter is installed in a vehicle. Corresponding microwave antennas are set up along the toll route sections, and these antennas detect the passing vehicles that are quipped with a microwave transmitter and report them to a billing center so that the incurred tolls can be calculated.
Another toll collecting system is based on complex on-board systems. On-board systems contain so-called on-board units (OBU) that are installed in vehicles. The on-board units evaluate current position information that is picked up, for instance, by means of a GPS navigation system. On the basis of stored map data, the on-board unit calculates the distance traveled and uses this information to determine the driven sections of the toll road and to transmit this data to a billing center. A drawback of such on-board systems is that the on-board units installed in vehicles are technically complex and thus expensive devices. Moreover, the map data stored in on-board units has to be continuously updated when the road geometries change.
In yet another toll collecting system, before the trip begins, the planned driving route has to be manually registered via the Internet or by means of stationary terminals. For this purpose, as a rule, data about the start of the trip, truck-related data, starting time and destination all have to be entered manually by the transportation company via the Internet or by the drivers themselves at stationary terminals. On the basis of the entered data, the route is determined and the toll incurred is calculated. If the planned route is entered at a stationary terminal, the driver has to pay the toll immediately either in cash or else by some other payment modality.
Toll collecting systems that require the route to be entered manually have the disadvantage that, as soon as the driver leaves the registered route, either the new route has to be registered via the Internet or the driver has to stop, for example, at a service station that has a stationary terminal where the new route can be registered and paid for.